Canada’s prison watchdog is urging the federal government to suspend its decision to close prison farms until more is known about the impact.
However, the recommendation is likely to have little effect because most of the prison farms have been closed and their dairy herds sold off.
Correctional Investigator Howard Sapers has tabled a report in the House of Commons that is highly critical of the implications of the government’s campaign to increase criminal charges and incarceration without appropriate rehabilitation tools, prisoner services and accommodation space.
Prisons are overcrowded and prisoners receive little rehabilitation, he argued.
Closing down the prison farms, which have operated since the 19th century, is part of the problem, he added.
The government argues that prison farms teach agricultural skills not appropriate to the modern economy, but Sapers disagreed.
“A significant portion of the offender population has a history of unstable work and lack of job skills,” said his report to Parliament.
“Prison-based employment and vocational training programs like the prison farms offer transferable lessons and life skills such as the value and pride of completing an ‘honest’ day’s work, punctuality, self-discipline, dependability, self-respect and responsibility that go well beyond the vagaries of the marketplace.”
The Conservative government reaction to opponents who demonstrated to save the prison farms typically was to mock the advocates as pro-criminal.
The National Farmers Union was part of the campaign to save the prison farms campaign.
Sapers said the closures were a shortsighted policy that needed more study.
“The service (Correctional Services Canada) would be well-advised to suspend the decision to close the prison farms until parliamentarians have concluded their review of this issue,” he said.
However, MPs who pursued the issue were unable to obtain government analysis that justified the view that the farms were a net cost to the system despite the food they produced and the skills they taught prisoners.
